The Jane Austen Price Index

Jane Austen’s imminent appearance on British £10 notes is hailed by some as a victory for feminists following criticism that the U.K.’s legal tender features a tad too much testosterone (except for the Queen, that is).

But this ritual changing of the monetary guard also provides an opportunity to reflect on an issue as old as the pound itself: purchasing power.

A research paper published last year by the U.K. House of Commons Library assesses the value of sterling between 1750 and 2011. A slight modification to incorporate 2012′s 3.2% increase in the country’s retail price index allows us to take a stab at assessing what £10 in Ms. Austen’s day would purchase today.

Since 1815, when the country was coming off a bout of high inflation fuelled by the recent Napoleonic Wars and Ms. Austen’s “Emma” was making its first appearance, prices have jumped by a factor of 75.4 times. In very simple terms, therefore, a tenner back then was worth £754 last year.

Of course, such comparisons are complicated a great deal by changes in technology in the intervening period of roughly 200 years: You couldn’t have read “Emma” on an Amazon Kindle back then, for example, or even driven to the bookstore to pick up a paper copy.

Still, there’s no denying that 1815 tenner was worth much more than the one Ms. Austen’s face will adorn. For example, £754 would buy a Briton almost 11 basic Kindles today. But inflation isn’t to be found in everything: with a price of precisely zero pounds and zero pence, that same reader could download an electronic copy of “Emma” for nothing.